Category: Tuition Talks

So, you’ve stumbled on to Tuition Talks. Here’s what this is all about — you, the students. The reality of tuition is that there are people that have to shoulder the burden of it. That’s why we’ve started Tuition Talks, a weekly segment where we publish students’ stories about their experiences with tuition. We hope that this project will give a face to the reality of tuition increases and help you understand why we need a tuition freeze now.
If you would like to be featured on Tuition Talks, please email us at sfutuitionfreeze@gmail.com

Reason for supporting a tuition freeze: “Education should not be a ball and chain scenerio”

The BC Liberals deregulated tuition and rent increases years ago. BC skyrocketed from one of the most affordable provinces for post-secondary education to one of the most expensive.

The tuition cap fee policy is full of leaks and loopholes, it’s not enforceable, and provincial funding for post secondary institutions in 2013 was 15% lower than it was in 2001. And this crunch of public money being diverted away from education has been felt by students. As an international student, I faced outrageous tuition increases. From 2012 to 2015 my tuition had increased significantly, to the point that it almost ended my ability to finish my studies. My parents and I had very tough conversations about the cost of my education, and if it was possible for them to help me. I went through a lot of stress and guilt through the whole process. But we persevered, not thanks to SFU or to government, but to my friends and family that supported me in many ways.

Education should not be a ball and chain scenario. It should give us tools and skills to take into the real world. But access is important. Student debt is crippling. If you keep relying on students to make up for systematic cuts to education from provincial and federal governments, you won’t have an educated workforce for the future: you will have an uneducated generation, unable to keep up with the changing world.

Why I support a tuition freeze: Relief from the stress of high international tuition and expensive costs of living in Vancouver.

I remember feeling absolutely elated when I received my letter of acceptance from SFU, just over a year ago. My partner and I had both been working hard to realize our dreams of continuing our education, and after several years, it was beginning to feel like our efforts were finally bearing fruit. Six months after moving to British Columbia, we are still both very happy to be here and to be at school. However, the financial stressors of being international students are beginning to take its toll.

Coming from a country with a very volatile economy, we both had to work very hard and save for several years in order to come to Canada.

While my tuition as a graduate student at SFU is reasonable, and I receive funding from my department, the cost of living in Vancouver remains very high. The biggest strain on our budget, however, is my partner’s tuition. As an international undergraduate, he is already paying a considerable amount, and with the proposed tuition increases, our family is looking at paying even more next year. Coming from a country with a very volatile economy, we both had to work very hard and save for several years in order to come to Canada. As international students, we are unable to access loans and many funding opportunities available to domestic students in Canada, and largely have to rely on ourselves to get through school. When we came here, we anticipated many different stressors. We knew that moving to a different country and a new culture would be an adjustment. We anticipated that we would miss our country and our families, and that we would have to work hard to succeed in school. What we had not anticipated was that financial pressures would override any other stressors that we would experience here.

At the moment, it looks like the only way for both of us to remain in school would be for one of us to go back to working full-time. Needless to say, this will make balancing work and school much harder. We are still very happy to have the opportunity to pursue our education in Canada. However, we do wish that we and other students like us had more support as we pursue our dreams.

With continued tuition increases and the extremely limited number of scholarships and grants for international students, SFU communicates a strong message that, for international students, education at this university is a privilege limited to those individuals who have substantial financial means. Given SFU’s strong voice in promoting social justice, both through research and community work, I hope that university’s officials and others involved in decision-making will hear our voices. By offering more financial support to students of limited financial means, SFU can show that this university is truly inclusive and engaged.

Reason for supporting a tuition freeze: A tuition hike is unfair to both international and domestic students

Hello everyone, my name is Viraj and I am currently in my fourth year here at SFU. I transferred from KPU in spring of 2016, where I studied sociology, history, and Asian studies. My intended route of study is a joint major in sociology and criminology (I’m leaning more towards the criminology side of things as I find it much more interesting and applicable). I am currently working two part-time restaurant jobs. Having recently acquired a second job as a cook-in-training, I also work as a waiter to pay my way through school (shout out to all my service industry people past and present; there truly is no other grind like ours).

I genuinely feel that what SFU is doing is wrong to not only existing domestic students, but also to the international student body. They are already forced into paying ludicrously high tuition rates

The reason I support a tuition freeze is simple — I genuinely feel that what SFU is doing is wrong to not only existing domestic students, but also to the international student body. They are already forced into paying ludicrously high tuition rates. Not to mention the myriad of other issues they face simply by being new faces in an unfamiliar country: language barriers, marked social isolation, loneliness, legal barriers that limit what/how often they can work, etc. The criminology student in me will go far as to say that the post-secondary tuition rates for international students constitute a form of legalized extortion, because lectures from a professor, assistance from one/more TA’s, and access to office hours should not cost over two thousand dollars per course. Ever. Not at SFU, nor anywhere else.

I did not wish to offload the burden onto my parents

On the domestic front, things aren’t much better. This is something I can personally attest to, having paid for the vast majority of my post-secondary education myself through a combination of student loans and various part-time jobs. I did not wish to offload the burden onto my parents, who are on the older side (they will both be 62 this year) with a nice list of health problems between them. As such, I also do what I can to pitch in financially with regards to taking care of the home (paying bills, getting groceries, gas money etc.). My family was certainly never “wealthy” by any means, so I learned self-sufficiency and the value of a dollar at a young age. Hell, I still remember 90% of the reason I got my first job at fourteen was simply because I got fed up asking the old man for money (sorry Pa just being real). Now, having recently turned 26, I stress about finances more than ever, often to an unhealthy degree. My work/life balance is tenuous at best.

[Financial issues], plus my own issues with mental health (generalized anxiety and depression specifically) have made not only meeting the cost, but the general demands of a post-secondary education difficult for me.

People ask me all the time about why and how I continue to put so much on my plate. Well, allow me to explain: How else am I going to find the money to pay for school? Save up for a down payment on a home? Build myself a stable financial foundation for the future? Take care of my parents when they are old and sick? Well, admittedly, they’re already old and sick, so time is very much of the essence. These outside factors, plus my own issues with mental health (generalized anxiety and depression specifically) have made not only meeting the cost, but the general demands of a post-secondary education difficult for me.

I’ve considered dropping out several times. If it wasn’t for the consistent encouragement of my parents, a close friend circle, the wonderful staff and various resources at SFU Health and Counselling, and the CAL (Centre For Accessible Learning) who’ve made my time at SFU significantly better, I most certainly would have thrown in the proverbial towel long ago.

My marks have suffered as a result. I’m currently on medication and have taken two others prior to this one. I’ve accessed counselling both inside and outside of school, and recently started using the “MySSP” service that SFU offers all to help me cope. I’ve considered dropping out several times. If it wasn’t for the consistent encouragement of my parents, a close friend circle, the wonderful staff and various resources at SFU Health and Counselling, and the CAL (Centre For Accessible Learning) who’ve made my time at SFU significantly better, I most certainly would have thrown in the proverbial towel long ago. Honorable mentions to Mr. Matthew Menzies (my adviser at the CAL), Father Julio at the Interfaith Centre, and Mrs. Doriana Marello and her “Better Coping” support group which I attended on and off last year. I truly believe she is an angel sent from the heavens to bless us mere mortals on Earth. I strongly urge any/all SFU students to try “Better Coping” if they haven’t done so already.

In summary, I think I speak for all students at SFU (domestic and international) when I say we have had enough. Enough of an overtly greedy and apathetic school administration that continues to strangle students financially with increasingly higher fees. Enough of these so-called “educators” who stand idly by and let all this unfold, and care more about their jobs and personal research than they do the actual students they teach. Enough of underfunded health and wellness resources on campus for students. End this tuition hike now.

Why I support a tuition freeze: Tuition hikes put profit over people, and we must fight to have the right to education.

I am a domestic ex-student at Simon Fraser University who was pursuing an undergrad English degree and writing my honours thesis when I dropped out. I dropped out during what was going to be either my second-to-last or last draft of my thesis.

I see questions in the eyes of almost everyone I have ever told that I dropped out of my undergrad. Even more questions when I tell them that I dropped out near the completion of my honours thesis. Some, mostly people who I organize with, understood and fully respected, even supported, my decision. It was one of the most difficult decisions of my life, but now I know that I don’t regret it.

I did not pay tuition out of pocket during the first year and a half of my undergrad. Excluding textbooks and class materials (as well as other expenses people usually write off as practically luxuries for students, like food), my tuition was paid for with the scholarships and grants I received after graduating from high school. The condition was that I take full course loads for every semester of the year, and that I be enrolled for at least 2 semesters per year. I lost my scholarships when I became severely mentally ill and could no longer attend classes full time.

The possibility of taking out students loans, having them accumulate interest post-graduation, and spending much of my life paying that debt back was a heavy mental (and now material) burden for me and my family

Had I not received scholarships or grants, me and my working class family wouldn’t have been able to pay for tuition. The possibility of taking out students loans, having them accumulate interest post-graduation, and spending much of my life paying that debt back was a heavy mental (and now material) burden for me and my family. My tuition each semester after my first year increased, and at that point I was already taking out loans to pay for it.

Tuition is already ludicrously and unjustifiably expensive. It was expensive when I was a student, and it is set to become increasingly worse. Tuition hikes would only make education harder to attain, and therefore harder for people to search for jobs that will support them in this increasingly and unsustainably expensive city. The possibility of taking out loans is no justification for a tuition raise, since these loans follow graduates for many years following their degree, and job seekers are in an increasingly precarious position (not to mention a trend of unpaid internships, contractualization, and stagnant wages.) This proposal sends the message that education is prioritized for those with money or (partly in my case) for those who can endure the unbelievable pressures (read: barriers) of keeping scholarships and grants.

At SFU (as would be the case in any academic institution under capitalism), I was a thing to generate profit continuously for someone else

Not only was I suffering mental illness and the burden of loans and debt, I was also becoming increasingly disillusioned with academia after having so much faith in it before. The neoliberal policies of the administration are evident in but not only in its proposed tuition raises. There was and still is a general push in the Liberal Arts departments to structure our education according to the needs of the locally flourishing tech and culture industries. At SFU (as would be the case in any academic institution under capitalism), I was a thing to generate profit continuously for someone else–profit through tuition, through loan debt, through my work in whatever industry they hoped I would enter.

My decision to drop out was not only because I couldn’t mentally or financially afford to keep going. It was also because I knew I was needed–and would be happier–elsewhere. My thesis, as much of a jumbled mess that it became, was an investigation on community-produced spaces, art-gentrification, and the solidifying of public-private boundaries by capital, settler-colonialism, and urban planning. My investigation remained incomplete during my thesis, because I brought it outside to my community and the people I work with, where it is being realized by our collective actions and struggles. I say this because it is fundamental to the building of true people power in this city that students fight against the systems that keep them from receiving the education that they need. These same systems reproduce settler-colonialism (which includes barring Indigenous people from all levels of education and generating profit through institutions on stolen and unceded land) and the widespread and growing unaffordability of living for working class and poor people in the city.

“W” being erected at Vancouver’s Woodwards Center. Downtown Vancouver has become one of the formost examples of gentrification in BC. Source: Museum of Vancouver.

I stand in solidarity with the student organizers at SFU as an ex-student. These tuition hikes put profit over people, and students have the capacity to organize, mobilize, and act against this proposal. If education is not treated as a right by the state and its institutions, if it is withheld from us, then we must take it back!

Why I support a tuition freeze: Already experienced steep hikes and debt in the UK; optimistic about students rallying around a common cause

“Coming from the UK, my undergraduate student debts amount to roughly £40,000, and I’ll probably be saddled with that debt for most of my working life. For context, in 2010 the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government raised UK tuition fees from £3,000 to £9,000 per year (roughly equivalent to 15,000 CAN dollars) which came into effect the first year I started my undergraduate studies. Under the initial guise of a necessary, austerity measure, during the past 9 years we’ve seen more and more cuts to, for example, bursaries for low-income students, the increased casualization of the academic workforce, the full transformation of university league tables into an Olympic sport, and even talk of the tuition fee cap rising again to £16,000. It’s really sad that it’s seemingly the same story here at SFU, especially in an area that is already so unaffordable to many, with most students working multiple jobs to stay afloat.

I think it’s very important to keep Tuition Freeze going as a movement and to be on-guard both now and after the [Board of Governors] meeting in March. Because this certainly won’t be the end to attempts to raise tuition – if we at look at how education has become so much more expensive over the past 40 years, then no doubt within another, say, 5 years, university managers will be proposing another tuition hike, and so on and so forth. It’s crucial to build momentum and keep the campaign going way beyond the meeting in March. For despite the increased marketization of education in the UK, despite the intimidation and violence inflicted on students for protesting hikes or even daring to speak of free education for all, the positive side is there’s really been a culture shift among young people, both in and off campus. The protests against tuition in the 2010s united students around common concerns and in many cases radicalized them. Student movements lie at the heart of a revived interest in politics among young people on a larger scale, which today we see everywhere from Corbyn in the UK to [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and Sanders in the U.S. So even if we don’t get the right decision on March 21st let’s use Tuition Freeze as an opportunity to unite around shared, interlinked struggles both in and outside student politics, and continue to fight for a better future.”

Why they support a tuition freeze: Living costs are too high. Paired with increasing tution and interest, students are forced to live close to the poverty line.

Jesse: As a PhD student, I have been at SFU through huge changes in the Vancouver rental market. The cost of living is so high that I decided to work as a distance student while writing my thesis.

The university makes money and is reliant on highly qualified personnel such as TAs/TMs/Sessisonal Instructors, yet we are living under the poverty line. In addition to the tuition freeze, there should be a removal of interest on tuition. Every semester that I am not a TA, I end up paying interest on my tuition because I can’t afford it outright. I’m also faced with a decision about which debt to pay off: my credit card, or tuition?

“Give [professors] the money [TAs/TMs/ Sessionals] get, and see how far it goes.”

Professors live a life of privilege and are generally out of the loop when it comes to our cost of living. Give them the money we get and see how far it goes. Prospective graduate students should know about these negative yet true drawbacks. If I could go back in time I would not choose SFU again.

“The cost of education creates a burden and ongoing stress where I must constantly worry about how much money I need to make in order to fund my education.”

Contributer: Olan

Department: FASS/ Education. An English major with an Education minor.

Year: Fourth

Why I support a tuition freeze: Lack of financial assistance from the school while current tuition rates are already unafforable makes education unattainable for a large number of us

Hi everyone, my name is Olan and I am a fourth year English major and Education minor. I have two volunteer positions, two jobs, and I am taking four courses. My family immigrated to Canada when I was three and my mom still works two jobs that pay minimum wage in order to support our family.

With the tuition increase, I feel discouraged to want to continue my education when scholarships and funds are limited. The cost of education creates a burden and ongoing stress where I must constantly worry about how much money I need to make in order to fund my education. This has taken a toll on my mental health where I am unable to spend time with family and friends due to my schedule and I do not have the luxury to do so.

If education was more affordable, I would be able to have a better school and work life balance and I am able to spend quality time with loved ones. This in turn would improve my grades drastically and make me a well-rounded student where I would not suffer from burn-out. Any additional income that goes towards my tuition could go to helping my mom to lessen her workload as she is also overworked constantly. I wish I can support my mom more financially, but the increase cost in tuition prevents me from doing so.

I hope by sharing my story, other students may do the same as I am sure many students are in the same boat. Together, let’s advocate for a tuition freeze and make the cost of education more affordable.